Since 1906, a monument glorifying the Confederacy has stood in prominent place on the University of Mississippi campus in Oxford.
That year the United Daughters of the Confederacy erected a statue of an armed Confederate soldier on a tall marble plinth at the entrance to the campus of the University of Mississippi, part of a campaign to build a memorial culture that was national, rather than regional, in its reach. The monument’s ostensible purpose was to memorialize those who died fighting for the Confederacy. In fact its meaning to those who erected it was to declare the triumph of the “Anglo-Saxon race” over African Americans during Reconstruction; the UDC placed Confederate monuments as far afield from the South as Montana and Washington State. The Oxford statue’s effect, always, has been to terrorize and alienate Black students, faculty, and staff, and all those who share in or support their fight for equality and who revile white supremacy. When James Meredith enrolled as the first African American student at the University of Mississippi in the fall of 1962, anti-integration riots erupted in the shadow of the monument.
Students at the University of Mississippi have been fighting to remove the statue from its prominent place at the center of campus since 2015. State law prohibits the destruction or removal of war monuments, which has always been used as an excuse to do nothing. The university is governed by the Institutions of Higher Learning (IHL), a state board to which all of the members were appointed by former Republican governor Phil Bryant, further complicating removal.
In early 2019, in an attempt to remove these barriers, an interracial group of dedicated students from across campus wrote a resolution, later supported by student and faculty groups, demanding the relocation of the statue to a campus Civil War cemetery. For a year and a half, the plan awaited final approval from the IHL. Finally, after the most recent series of brutal Black deaths and righteous protests, the IHL approved the plan.
What was not part of the original plan crafted by the student group was a newly beautified university cemetery complete with new headstones, paths, and enhanced lighting. The relocation of the statue had always been considered a compromise gesture that would at least move the racist monument from its prominent position to a dusty, forgotten corner of campus; the intention was never to spend $1.15 million to revamp the cemetery as a shrine to white supremacy. The courageous students who have been fighting to get the statue moved, and who should have never had to carry the burdens of white supremacy, are the best of Mississippi. Joshua Mannery, the Associated Student Body president, along with Leah Davis, Arielle Hudson, and Jarvis Benson, three brilliant alums, reached out to the English department at the University of Mississippi for our support. This is our statement.
Statement From Members of the University of Mississippi English Department on Plans to Relocate the Confederate Cenotaph
We, the undersigned members of the English department, are appalled at the plans to renovate the Civil War cemetery on campus and to place the cenotaph commemorating Confederate soldiers at its heart. Our objections are not merely to the details of the site, but to the special function that this monument serves as a declaration of the university’s values. The notion that the cenotaph was an expression of grief rather than a celebration of white supremacy and Black oppression has been thoroughly debunked by professor Anne Twitty’s recent discovery of the full text of the dedicatory speech, which makes it clear that the statue is a monument to white Southerners’ triumph in the “systematic campaign of violence and intimidation against Black Southerners to ensure that the Confederacy’s defeat would not also mean the end of white supremacy.” The work of such sentiments should be evacuated from campus space, not glorified there through lavish new expenditures.